


Walk Me Home

by bluflamingo



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Concussions, F/M, Gen, Getting Together, Multi, Pre-Relationship, Senior year
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-27
Updated: 2019-11-27
Packaged: 2021-02-26 03:48:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,519
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21587104
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluflamingo/pseuds/bluflamingo
Summary: Partway through their final year, Nursey gets a major concussion, and his three best friends get him through it.
Relationships: Chris "Chowder" Chow/Caitlin Farmer, Chris "Chowder" Chow/Caitlin Farmer/Derek "Nursey" Nurse/Will "Dex" Poindexter
Comments: 5
Kudos: 43
Collections: Polya Epifest 2019





	Walk Me Home

**Author's Note:**

  * For [story_telling_sage](https://archiveofourown.org/users/story_telling_sage/gifts).



The first couple of days pass in a blur - literally, every time Derek opens his eyes, the whole world is swimming. He keeps the curtains closed and the covers pulled over his head, and after the third time someone loudly shushes someone else, his headphones on with a white noise app playing in the background whenever he's alone. 

He still throws up almost every hour, even if all he's got in his stomach is Gatorade. 

"Concussions suck," he whispers to Chowder some time on what he thinks is the afternoon of the third day. Chowder's helping him back to bed, after helping him into the bathroom to throw up, because Chowder is the best person Derek knows, and probably Derek should nominate him for sainthood, if either of them believed in that, or Derek knew how to do it. Do Christians even still appoint new saints?

It's possible that Derek's brain is more broken than anyone wants to admit.

"I know." Chowder leans back against the headboard and lets Derek lean against his shoulder. His head is objectively worse when he's sitting up than lying down, but Chowder's warm and solid, and hums seventies pop music really quietly when Derek feels too swimmy to hold a conversation. "Try to drink a little more, the doctor said you need to stay hydrated." 

Derek remembers at the last minute not to shake his head, and just moans in objection. Throwing up makes his head hurt worse, and moving makes the spinning worse, and the sound of himself throwing up echoes in his head like there's nothing in there any more. He'd rather get dehydrated.

"Just a little bit," Chowder says, so soft, and carefully tips the bottle so Derek only has to swallow the tiniest amount. His stomach still churns, but not so badly that Derek can't swallow past it.

He pushes the bottle away after a few sips, not willing to chance it. Chowder doesn't argue, just helps Derek lie down, head resting on Chowder's thigh. "Close your eyes," Chowder says, and rests his hand on Derek's shoulder. Derek does as he's told; even with his eyes closed, everything feels like it's lurching, like he's going to tip right off the bed. He fumbles a hand out of the blankets and grips onto Chowder's thigh, all muscled under his jeans from almost four years of NCAA hockey. Chowder puts his free hand over Derek's. "I've got you," he says. "I'm right here."

He's gone when Derek wakes up two hours later to throw up again, but the memory of the words lingers, soft and gentle against Derek's aching head.

*

Less than an hour after the team leave for a two-game road-trip, Cait taps softly on Derek's bedroom door and slips inside. She's wearing leggings and one of Chowder's Sharks hoodies. It's cold when she leans into Derek for a gentle hug, and her hair is still a bit damp. Derek's graduated to having the curtains open, but his head still feels like it's going to explode; the cold is weirdly soothing against his skin.

"You okay?" Cait asks, staying very still with her hands light on Derek's shoulders. She's been by once in the week since the hit and the concussion, but Derek's memories are really hazy, and he doesn't even really remember if they talked about anything. 

"Better with you," he says. Cait laughs a little and gently eases them apart so Derek can lean back into the cushions Chowder made Dex arrange before they left. 

Cait sits on the edge of the bed, one leg drawn up and her backpack in her lap. "I went down to that health store you like in town, and they said this is the best tea for nausea." She puts a pink box on the bed. "But I think they thought I wanted them cos I was pregnant, so that was awkward."

Derek laughs, then has to close his eyes as everything rolls over in his head. Cait apologizes quietly, reaching over to rub Derek's knee. "Sorry, sweetie."

Derek focuses on taking deep breaths, desperate not to throw up. "It just hurts," he says.

Cait hugs him again. "You've done this before, right?"

"Not like this." Derek had three concussions during high school, and another in his junior year with Samwell. He's been to all the lectures about how serious concussion can be, he took all the medical advice, and every time, they were mild and he was back on the ice before he could really start to miss it too badly. This isn't like that, and all he can think about is the terrible concussion that Crosby had, the one that took him out of hockey for an entire season and had everyone worrying it was the end of his career.

Cait pets his hair, not quite hard enough to be a massage. She's one of only a handful of people in the world that Derek can stand touching his hair, but it feels really good. "It's still really early days," she says. "Don't borrow trouble. Not to sound like my grandma or anything."

Derek concentrates on breathing, the feel of Cait's fingers through his hair and the smell of the late winter cold on her clothes. He doesn't let himself think about how few games are left in the season, or Dex and Chowder and the team on their way to play without him, or how he's barely left his room all week and nearly fell over when he tried to walk across the room on his own. He just focuses on the moment, like the future's never going to happen.

*

Cait heads out to meet the bus when Chowder texts to say they're nearly back to campus, and Derek's expecting at least an hour before anyone comes back to the Haus. Instead, she's only been gone fifteen minutes when the stairs creak and Derek's door opens.

"Hi," Dex says. He's still wearing his hat and coat, his hockey bag still over his shoulder. "Can I come in?" he asks from just inside the door, the same way he has every time since Bitty made the two of them hug it out over their failed attempt at sharing a room. Not that Derek can really say anything – he pretty much never goes down to Dex's space in the basement.

He doesn't bother answering, just reaches out a hand until Dex crosses the room to take it and squeeze. Off the ice, Dex doesn't hug anyone – doesn't really touch at all, especially when it comes to people outside the team. Derek knows how much it means that this has become a thing for Dex, with Derek and Chowder and, lately, Cait. He might not be totally sure exactly what it means, but that doesn’t really matter, compared to the weeks when the only place he and Dex could be together without a fight was on the ice. 

"How was the road-trip?" Derek asks.

Dex sits on the edge of the bed, still holding Derek's hand. "We won both games in OT," he says. "How's your head?"

Derek appreciates that he doesn't say anything about them missing Derek on the ice. Just thinking about Dex playing with someone else makes him want to cry. There's hardly any games left in the season, and they already know they're not going to the Frozen Four – Whiskey signed with the Sens at the end of his junior year, and they don't have any scorers who are close to as good as he was. Derek and Dex and Chowder might have already played their last game together, without even knowing it. "The same. I'm seeing the doctor again tomorrow."

Dex nods. "What time?" he asks, and when Derek tells him, "I'll come with you."

"It's fine. Coach Murray said he'd come get me." The campus medical center is only a fifteen-minute walk away from the Haus, but there's no way Derek will be able to do it. He's not even sure if he can walk down the stairs without someone to hold onto.

"I'll come with you," Dex says again, like he's going to argue about it, and Derek just can't. 

He squeezes Dex's hand instead, and really quietly says, "I'm scared."

They've been friends, him and Dex and Chowder, for their whole college careers, more than long enough to figure out how they work together. Chowder's the one they both go to when they want to talk about feelings, but there's something about Dex that makes Derek feel safe, right then. 

Dex stands up, sits back down at Derek's side, a comforting, warm line against Derek's over-heated skin, and doesn't argue when Derek leans his head against Dex's shoulder. He doesn't say anything, but he put his arm round Derek, lets Derek lean against him, and that helps.

*

It's bad news. Really bad news. 

Derek's not going to be playing any more games at Samwell. He's done with college hockey, forever.

Then the doctor gives him a flyer about what not to do, and when Derek looks down, the letters slip sideways, blurring and tipping off the page. Just looking at them makes him feel sick.

"I can't read it." His voice sounds really far away, and he can't really breathe and –

And it turns out that having a panic attack when you've already got a concussion really, really sucks. 

Even after it's over, Derek can't focus properly, so the doctor talks to Coach Murray, about long-term effects from concussions, and concussion management, and how Derek should think about withdrawing for the semester and going back to his parents while he's still recovering.

"No," Derek says, gripping Dex's hand hard enough that it has to hurt, when he realizes what the doctor's saying. His voice cracks and he's probably crying, but he doesn't even care. "No, I want to stay here."

"Son –" Murray starts, twisting in his seat in front of the doctor's desk to look at Derek, sitting on the gurney in the corner and leaning against the wall.

Derek reminds himself not to shake his head. "Please," he says. "I want to stay here."

"His parents travel a lot," Dex adds, even though Murray probably knows that – he met Derek's moms at the one game they've made it to, other than the year the team made the final of the Frozen Four, and Derek told him, when he broke his arm, not to call his dad when Murray couldn't get hold of his moms. "There's no-one there to look after him."

Murray and the doctor both raise their eyebrows. Next to him, Dex shifts. Derek can't see, but he figures Dex is probably assuming his 'responsible alternate captain' posture. "Tell me what he needs," Dex says. "Chowder and I will get everyone in line."

The doctor looks at Murray, which is kind of insulting, but Murray nods. "Chow's our captain and the goalie. He's responsible. Poindexter as well."

The doctor still doesn't look totally convinced, but she agrees in the end, and releases Derek into the tender care of Dex and the Samwell Men's Hockey Team.

*

Or, as it turns out, the combined tender care and iron first of Dex, Chowder and Cait.

Derek's senior thesis is a sticking point that his professor agrees to revisit when it becomes clearer exactly how the concussion recovery is going to go, but the rest of Derek's professors, when Cait sits next to him and types emails on his behalf, offer to use the work he has done to make up his grade, plus anything he might end up able to complete. It'll mean a hit to his GPA, but not one he can't live with, and it's better than delaying graduating.

"Or not graduating at all," Derek says, when Dex, who's taken control of Derek's electronics, reads out the email from his advisor. The four of them are gathered in Derek's room, since he still can't reliably manage the stairs down to Dex's basement, and the unrelenting Sharksness of Chowder's room makes his head hurt worse.

"Don't say that," Chowder says, pressing closer on Derek's left side. 

"That's not going to happen," Dex points out from Derek's desk chair. "So you don't need to worry about it."

"And even if that was a risk, the school would figure something out," Cait adds, sitting on Derek's right side, weaving a friendship bracelet, which is apparently a thing in the women's volleyball team at the moment. 

Derek, for the first time since the hit, doesn't feel like he's going to fall over if he breathes too hard. He's not invested in giving that up by arguing with his three favorite people in the world, and even if he was, the door to the Haus slams open with an almighty crash before he can open his mouth.

In an already well-rehearsed routine, Dex glares, hauls himself upright, and goes downstairs to very quietly yell at the baby frogs about Derek's head. Derek's still not allowed to look at screens, but both Cait and Chowder have video of it on their phones that they've promised to share as soon as that changes.

Derek kind of loves them all a ridiculous amount. 

*

He misses the last game of the season, a three-two loss against Yale, who are going into the play-offs but were still, according to Cait who travelled with the team's supporters, steely-eyed in their determination to crush Samwell.

"They played so well," she tells him over the phone after the game, while Derek lies in his dark room with the phone on speaker and his eyes closed, his pulse pounding right inside his brain. Cait's doing all the talking – literally the only reason Derek isn't crying from the pain is that crying makes it worse. "I thought Dex was going to kill one of Yale's players, he kept going after Sunshine…"

Derek falls asleep listening to her talk and wakes up to Chowder and Cait curled on either side of him, Chowder's head on his shoulder, and Dex sitting with his back against the wall at the foot of the bed. All three of them are asleep; Derek closes his eyes and lets their breathing lull him back down as well.

*

Missing their last game is, without question, the worst part of the concussion. Hockey's been such a huge part of his life for so long, and he knew that was going to change after college, has ever since he decided he wasn't going to try for the pro leagues. He just never expected it to change so abruptly, in the way that it has.

As the days since the last game keep adding up, though, it aches less and less. It's slow, but the concussion symptoms start to fade. He has days when he can sit outside, days when he can read, at least for a few minutes, days when he doesn't feel like he's going to throw up or fall over or scream at some overly concerned member of the team. 

Those are the days that get him through the worst days, when he can't stand up, has to lie in a dark room and breathe through his nose and not cry no matter how much it hurts. 

On those days – the bad days, because on the worst days he can't even stand to have someone else in the room with him – Dex and Chowder and Cait do everything they can to get him through it.

Dex, who's always been good with his hands, gets one of the trainers to teach him neck massage techniques. On the bad days, he slips into Derek's room, sits beside him on the bed, and works his warm hands into the tense muscles of Derek's neck until he's soft like putty. It's almost enough, sometimes, to make him forget how much his head hurts.

Cait, who didn't get it when Derek said that people get overwhelming sometimes, but asked him what she should do anyway, and always does it, brings her thesis notes to Derek's room. On the bad days, she sits at the foot of the bed, Derek's legs draped over hers, and works quietly until the shuffle of her papers and the sound of pages turning lulls him into an almost restful sleep.

Chowder, who physically can't sit still with nothing to do, gets Derek's thesis reading list off his laptop and borrows all the books from the library. On the bad days, he lies down on Derek's bed, tucks Derek against his shoulder, and reads the chapters Derek would be poring over if he could, slow and soft enough that Derek doesn't have to fight his brain to make sense of the words.

And, slowly, things get better.

*

He's not well enough to be back in class when Finals roll round – while everyone else haunts the library, he splits his time between the doctor, the front porch of the Haus, and his advisor's office, working out a timeline for him to finish his thesis over the summer, or maybe in the fall, depending on whether his recovery speeds up or slows down. At least his doctor seems pretty sure recovery is going to happen, even if she does stress, every time Derek sees her, that hockey is almost certainly not in Derek's future, not if he wants to avoid permanent brain damage. Which Derek doesn't, but he's not thinking about never playing again – one thing at a time, and his doctor keeps telling him not to get stressed, which isn't an option when he thinks about never playing again.

Chowder's signed with the Sharks, and Dex, after entertaining a couple of different offers, with the Rangers. Hockey's always going to be a part of Derek's life, even if he never plays again.

Cait's never really talked much about what she'll do post-graduation, and Derek's never asked. He knows Cait wants to stay in sport, and equally knows that she doesn't have the kinds of options Dex and Chowder have – the kinds of options he could have had, if he'd taken any of the occasional offers to talk that he got from NHL and AHL scouts. 

It means, though, that he has no idea what's coming when she and Chowder summon Derek and Dex to a twilight picnic by the pond and Cait announces that she's taken an assistant coaching job with the women's team at Monterey Bay.

Chowder, grinning big enough to split his face as Derek (carefully) and Dex (awkwardly) hug her, clearly already knows. Cait looks just as thrilled, settling back into the curve of Chowder's arm around her shoulder, but the look they give each other is weird, like there's something wrong.

Dex obviously picks up on it as well, asking, "What's wrong?"

"Nothing!" Chowder and Cait chorus, giving each other another weird look as they do so. Cait breaks first, turning back to look at the two of them. Derek's ended up leaning against Dex's arm, still a little off-balance from the walk, and he's glad of the stability of it, faced with whatever mysterious thing is making Chowder and Cait weird. 

"We were talking," she says. "The Sharks offered to find someone on the team that Chris can live with when he moves out there, and Monterey Bay offered me help to find an apartment as well, but we think we want to try living together instead. I'm probably going to get an invite to the Olympic team, so I don't want to get my own place and leave it empty."

"That's a good idea." Dex sounds weird too, but Derek's too tense to turn and look at his face. He just watches Cait, waiting.

She shuffles closer to them, Chowder moving with her, and takes Derek's hand. At her side, Chowder reaches out, waits for Dex to give him his hand. "And we were thinking," Cait says, looking at Derek, "That you talked a lot about applying to Berkeley, and you," looking at Dex, "Need a home outside of the season. Unless you've changed your mind about going back to Maine."

Derek doesn't need to look to see that Dex is shaking his head – he still gets on well with his family, but he's admitted, a couple of times, that it's easier when he's away from them and the way they don't quite get him any more. "So we thought," Cait finishes, "Maybe we could all get a place together. The four of us."

"Like room-mates?" Derek asks. He already knows he's going to say yes – Berkeley has a great literature program. He just wants to be sure.

Cait and Chowder look at each other. "If you wanted," Chowder says slowly. "Or – or as more. If you wanted. Both of you."

"Shit," Dex says, very quietly. Derek turns his head as carefully as he can manage and it's totally worth it. Dex's eyes are bright and his cheeks are flushed, and he looks really happy. Even more so when he sees Derek looking at him, and takes Derek's hand, completing the circle. 

"Yeah," Derek says for both of them. "We want."


End file.
